Today’s mothers are faced with difficult decisions: breastfeeding or formula feeding, having a career or being a stay-at-home parent, modern or traditional education—and silent pressure from the fear that any choice they make is a mistake. This constant doubt weighs more heavily on them than the choices themselves.
Young mothers today are perhaps more aware than previous generations of the overwhelming burden of guilt that comes with motherhood. This is partly because it has not been so long since psychologists popularised the idea that the quality of the relationship between a child and their mother influences the quality of all the relationships the child will develop in adulthood. This is the idea behind “attachment theory”, developed shortly after World War II, which revolutionised attitudes about education to the extent that it has been compared to the discovery of the role of vitamins in the body.
The pressure to be the perfect mother
Attachment theory is perhaps the most popular psychological model today, describing how interpersonal relationships in childhood influence later relationships. A basic tenet of the theory is that the primary caregiver (usually the mother, but it can be anyone who spends a lot of time with the child and provides comfort when they are overwhelmed) is the main source of influence.
This explains why many mothers strive to apply everything that psychologists discover, and why they have institutional support to do so. Many maternity wards (especially private ones) now offer mothers the chance to hold their babies directly on their skin immediately after birth, as studies have shown that this strengthens the bond between mother and child. Breastfeeding specialists constantly run campaigns showing the many benefits of breastfeeding.
All this advice is beneficial, of course. However, when one piece of advice conflicts with another, it can leave mothers feeling confused about how to make the best decision for their child, with the added pressure of believing that this decision will determine their child’s entire future well-being.
“For many of us, it’s a source of tremendous pressure,” wrote Liuan Huska in Christianity Today. “All in all, we’re left wondering: Has parenting always been this hard? Is our intense contemporary approach the only way to parent well? And how does the gospel speak into our mothering angst?”
A theory with well-defined cultural origins
The answers the columnist found could offer hope to mums who feel overwhelmed by the perfectionist ideals they have set themselves, despite having only the purest and most loving intentions. First, Huska points out that although attachment theory is so widespread today, it is not without its critics. In her view, Scripture offers a much richer perspective on what it means to raise a child.
For example, anthropologists Robert and Sarah LeVine criticise the theory for presenting itself as the only method, despite it clearly originating in a specific cultural space (the West) in a relatively recent time period (the 1950s and 1960s), and not having been adopted by other cultures around the world, which nevertheless raise healthy and emotionally stable children.
In the book Do Parents Matter?: Why Japanese Babies Sleep Soundly, Mexican Siblings Don’t Fight, and American Families Should Just Relax, the authors argue that attachment theory is not as scientifically sound as its proponents claim. Rather, they suggest, it is the result of a specific cultural configuration marked by dissatisfaction with strict parenting and a tendency to encourage women who had entered the workforce during World War II to return to domestic occupations. The pressure in this direction was so strong that between the 1950s and 1970s a significant number of psychologists claimed that a mother’s lack of emotional involvement in raising her children caused autism.
This criticism of the cultural limitations of attachment theory is also found in the work of Barbara Tizard, Professor Emeritus of Education at the UK’s Institute of Education. She claims that John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory and author of the monograph Maternal Care and Mental Health, limited his psychological model by basing it too much on his personal experience. Bowlby came from a conventional upper-middle-class family. His father was a surgeon knighted for his service to the royal family, while his mother left him and his siblings in the attic nursery with a nanny to take care of them. The children saw their mother for only one hour a day, in the afternoon, in the drawing room. Bowlby was deeply affected by the departure of his nanny at the age of four, and at seven he was sent to boarding school. He later told his wife that he “wouldn’t send a dog away to boarding school at age seven”. According to the researcher, Tizard believed that these experiences made Bowlby deeply sensitive to issues of attachment and loss. However, she states that he only made one public remark about that period of his life, which was cryptic, confessing that he “had been sufficiently hurt but not sufficiently damaged” by his childhood experiences.
Who is to blame for my child’s mistakes?
Erin J. Lee, from the Rochester Institute of Technology, argues that J. R. Harris, the most vehement critic of attachment theory, not only shows that Bowlby’s model is limited, but also suggests ways in which it could be expanded. While many people assume that if parents are good, honest, and respectful towards their children, their children will be good, honest, and respectful towards others in turn, Harris claims that this is not necessarily the case. He claims that sometimes irreproachable parents can have children who behave badly, and that the parents are not to blame for this.
Harris claims that parents do not have exclusive control over shaping their children’s personalities, and characters, and that their peers can sometimes have a much greater influence than parents do. She gives the example of children of immigrants who speak their parents’ language at home but learn to speak the language of their host country without an accent, as this helps them integrate with their peers. Lee argues that if a child is raised by good parents in a violent or delinquent environment, they are more likely to be influenced by their surroundings than by their parents. She says that the reverse would be equally true. If a child with delinquent tendencies moves to a different environment, they are very likely to adapt and get back on the right track.
Referring to the genetic roots of personality, Harris adds that these are an additional reason why parents should not be held fully responsible for their children’s actions. To illustrate this idea, she refers to studies conducted on twins which compared the personality development of twins raised separately in different families. The studies found that, despite being raised in different environments with different habits, the twins developed similar personalities and habits.
However, none of these criticisms deny the importance of maternal love, discourage it, or, in contrast, suggest that it has messianic powers over the child. And that’s okay. Some psychological research shows that, although most mothers would like to respond with maximum attention to their children’s demands, they manage to do so only 50% of the time. Such statistics sound alarming. However, there is no need to panic, as researchers suggest that it would be impossible for a mother to be 100% available to her child at all times. Moreover, a child’s well-being depends not only on knowing their mother is always there for them, but also on feeling that any temporary absence, such as when she is preparing lunch and cannot come to them when they have just discovered an interesting character in a book, can be resolved with gentleness and love.
On the subject of Christian balance
Returning to Huska’s question about Scripture’s perspective on raising children, the editorialist highlights the fallacy of the stereotype that devout parents can only raise devout children. If the child misbehaves, the blame is often placed solely on the parent for not being “Christian enough”.
Such a preconception, she says, deprives the gospel of its full message. “The gospel speaks of a kingdom economy where each person’s flourishing is connected with another’s, and also with the flourishing of the entire community (Jeremiah 29:7).” However, she also acknowledges that “we often think of parenting as a zero-sum game. ‘It feels like [my kids’] amazing life comes at the expense of my own’, says one mother candidly.” The contrast between the two views is deepened by the reality of the need to sacrifice for one’s child. The balance comes from realising that the desired sacrifice should not drain mothers, because children need their mothers to “flourish” alongside them. Rather, it is a sacrifice that “sanctifies my heart so that it more closely resembles God’s. It also draws out creativity, grit, and a sense of humor that informs my faith, work, and life. My children’s flourishing is part of my flourishing”, believes Huska.
Both attachment theory in its exclusive manifestation and the preconception that Christian parents must determine their children’s spiritual destiny propagate the martyr parent image. However, this can lead to the depersonalisation of the parent rather than the salvation of the child, and it can degenerate into idolising the child. Neither of these outcomes is consistent with Christ’s promise of “life to the full”, which parents also have every right to hope for.
